Boeing in talks on next wave of fuel-efficient planes
David Gow in Paris
Monday June 18, 2007
The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/Business/story/0,,2105350,00.html
Boeing threw down the gauntlet to its loss-making European rival Airbus yesterday, announcing that it was already in talks with airlines on developing a more fuel-efficient plane to replace its bestselling 737 single-aisle jet.
The US plane maker, which outsold Airbus in 2006 for the first time in six years, has stolen a lead on its rival by winning 584 firm orders for its 787 Dreamliner long-haul jet, which enters service in 2008. Airbus, forced to redesign its rival A350, doubling its cost to €11bn and delaying its entry until 2013, has won just 19 orders.
On the eve of the biennial Paris air show, opening today, Scott Carson, head of Boeing's commercial aeroplanes division, said his company had been in talks for more than a year about replacing the 737 from 2015. He said the demands airlines were making in terms of fuel economy, CO2 reductions and running costs could not be met by current technologies. EasyJet, the budget airline, last week called for all new planes to produce 50% less CO2 by 2015.
Mr Carson's comments will put pressure on Airbus to come up with plans to replace its own A320 range single-aisle jets when it is struggling to overcome the financial impact of the two-year delays to its A380 superjumbo (€4.8bn losses), of building a new A350 and of the rising euro against the dollar. Louis Gallois, Airbus chief executive, said every 10 cent depreciation in the US currency cost his company €1bn.
Mr Gallois, who insisted Airbus would achieve €300m in savings this year, virtually abandoned the perennial dogfight with Boeing to win supremacy. "I don't think our target is to sell more planes than Boeing but to be the best and not the biggest; I'm not looking for 52% of the market," he said.
Airbus, expected to sign a multi-billion-euro contract with Qatar for A350s this week, is likely to announce new orders as it presses to meet its self-imposed target of 200 firm orders for the new plane by the end of the year. Boeing is also due to announce a spate of orders, including from established US and European airlines.
Mr Gallois was forced to issue a rebuttal of claims by Jim McNerney, Boeing's chief executive, that airlines still had no defined idea of the A350's specifications, insisting that this was unfair. He will also try to reassure Steve Hazy, head of the world's biggest leasing firm and plane-purchaser ILFC, that problems with the A350's composite wings have been solved.
But Mr Carson has agreed to hold talks with Mr Gallois on green technologies and welcomed the European group's slow restoration to health.